Superintendent Rick Hensel said Tuesday that nine girls in the Gervais School District became pregnant this school year. That means 5 percent of the school district's girls in grades six through 12 became pregnant.

"The decision was made to allow some specified teachers to have condoms that they could distribute after a discussion with the student," Hensel said.

According to the draft minutes from a May 14 meeting, the school board was generally supportive of distributing condoms to students in grades six through 12, but were concerned about the details.

The board agreed to support the recommendation as long as the condoms were distributed by trained professionals, though they weren't more specific.

Hensel said he assumed the responsibility would fall on health teachers.

The motion passed unanimously.

Gervais is a town of about 2,500 people north of Salem. Teen pregnancy in the school district has been a concern for the board since a year ago, when a group of nursing interns from Oregon Health and Science University presented a study on the issue.

The study said 7 percent of Gervais High School's girls had experienced a pregnancy.

The study pointed at the lack of access to condoms and information as a problem. Forty-two percent of Gervais High School students surveyed responded that they "never" or "sometimes" use anything to protect themselves from pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases.

Gervais School District appears to have been left behind in the rest of the country's successes in teen pregnancy. The Guttmacher Institute reported this month that Oregon's teen pregnancy rate has dropped to a historic new low.